Effects of variable winds on biological productivity on continental shelves in coastal upwelling systems

The production and distribution of biological material in wind-driven coastal upwelling systems are of global importance, yet they remain poorly understood. Production is frequently presumed to be proportional to upwelling rate, yet high winds can lead to advective losses from continental shelves, where many species at higher trophic levels reside. An idealized mixed-layer conveyor (MLC) model of biological production from constant upwelling winds demonstrated previously that the amount of new production available to shelf species increased with upwelling at low winds, but declined at high winds [Botsford, L.W., Lawrence, C.A., Dever, E.P., Hastings, A., Largier, J., 2003. Wind strength and biological productivity in upwelling systems: an idealized study. Fisheries Oceanography 12, 245–259]. Here we analyze the response of this model to time-varying winds for parameter values and observed winds from the Wind Events and Shelf Transport (WEST) study region. We compare this response to the conventional view that the results of upwelling are proportional to upwelled volume. Most new production per volume upwelled available to shelf species occurs following rapid increases in shelf transit time due to decreases in wind (i.e. relaxations). However, on synoptic, event time-scales shelf production is positively correlated with upwelling rate. This is primarily due to the effect of synchronous periods of low values in these time series, paradoxically due to wind relaxations. On inter-annual time-scales, computing model production from wind forcing from 20 previous years shows that these synchronous periods of low values have little effect on correlations between upwelling and production. Comparison of model production from 20 years of wind data over a range of shelf widths shows that upwelling rate will predict biological production well only in locations where cross-shelf transit times are greater than the time required for phytoplankton or zooplankton production. For stronger mean winds (narrower shelves), annual production falls below the peak of constant wind prediction [Botsford et al., 2003. Wind strength and biological productivity in upwelling systems: an idealized study. Fisheries Oceanography 12, 245–259], then as winds increase further (shelves become narrower) production does not decline as steeply as the constant wind prediction.     

海洋环境预报电视节目制作与回顾

作为海洋环境预报公益服务的窗口自开播至今,经历了20年的风风雨雨,海洋电视节目的内容从单一性的项目到海浪、海温、海冰、风暴潮、海水浴场综合性预报,电视视频信号从复合、分量信号到数字信号,通过光缆采用基带的方式传送视频信号到中央电视台.     

Composition and distribution of phytoplankton with size fraction results at southwestern east/japan sea

Abundance and distribution of phytoplankton in seawater at southwestern East/Japan Sea near Gampo were investigated by HPLC analysis of photosynthetic pigments during summer of 1999. Detected photosynthetic pigments were chlorophyll a, b, c₁₊₂ (Chl a, Chl b, Chl c₁₊₂), fucoxanthin (Fuco), prasinoxanthin (Pras), zeaxanthin (Zea), 19’-butanoyloxyfucoxanthin (But-fuco) and beta-carotene (β-Car). Major carotenoid was fucoxanthin (bacillariophyte) and minor carotenoids were Pras (prasinophyte), Zea (cyanophyte) and But-fuco (chrysophyte). Chl a concentrations were in the range of 0.16-8.3/land subsurface chlorophyll maxima were observed at 0-10m at inshore and 30–50 m at offshore. Thermocline and nutricline tilted to the offshore direction showed a mild upwelling condition. Results from size-fraction showed that contribution from nano+picoplankton at Chl a maximum layer was increased from 18% at inshore to 69% at offshore on average. The maximum contribution from nano+picoplankton was found as 87% at St. E4. It was noteworthy that contribution from nano+picoplanktonic crysophytes and green algae to total biomass of phytoplankton was significant at offshore. Satellite images of sea surface temperature indicated that an extensive area of the East/Japan Sea showed lower temperature (<18 °C) but the enhanced Chl a patch was confined to a narrow coastal region in summer, 1999. Exceptionally high flux of low saline water from the Korea/Tsushima Strait seemed to make upwelling weak in summer of 1999 in the study area. Results of comparisons among Chl a from SeaWIFs, HPLC and fluorometric analysis showed that presence of Chl b cause underestimation of Chl a about 30% by fluorometric analysis but overestimation by satellite data about 30-75% compared to HPLC data.     

Problems with biogenic silica measurement in marginal seas

Surface sediment samples from the Bohai, Yellow Sea, and the Pacific were used to assess biogenic silica (BSi) content and to study uncertainties in BSi measurements. The contents of BSi in the Bohai and Yellow Sea are all less than 1%. The dissolution of BSi in sediments from the Bohai and Yellow Sea is very important to maintain high levels of silicate in the water column. The non-biogenic silica from clay minerals has an obvious effect on BSi of sediment samples in the Bohai and Yellow Sea with low BSi and high clay minerals. The solid to solution ratio was found to have a great influence on BSi measurement, which can induce uncertainties up to 75%. The effect of loss by sorption and centrifugation is negligible. Interlaboratory comparison of techniques for BSi measurement by the wet alkaline extraction technique of Mortlock and Froelich [Deep-Sea Res. 36 (1989) 1415-1426] with clay correction was suggested to give no significant differences. However, differences in sediment compositions and reagent to sample ratio may limit the application of the wet alkaline extraction method.     

Kuroshio extension variability explored through assimilation of TOPEX/POSEIDON altimeter data into a quasi-geostrophic model

Mesoscale features in the eastward extension of the Kuroshio were investigated using assimilation of TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P) data into a three-layer quasi-geostrophic model. The T/P data exhibited an elongated state of the southern recirculation gyre in 1993–95 and 1997, between whose two periods the gyre had a contracted state in 1995–96. A few stationary eddies were located in the southern gyre during the contracted state. The baroclinic instability, which was indicated by the phase shift from the uppermost-to the lowest-layer anomalies toward the downstream side, was evident near the Kuroshio Extension (KE) path. Since the instability never appeared in the artificial model without bottom topography, the topographic barrier for the eastward flow in the lowest layer was a necessary condition for the instability. The instability synchronized with the transition in the western region of the KE axis from the elongated to the contracted states. This evolution was interpreted as if the baroclinic instability played some part in the KE states and was a trigger for the transition from the elongated to the contracted states.     

Inverse reconstructions of ecosystem flows in investigating regime shifts: impact of the choice of objective function

Inverse analysis is increasingly used in ecosystem modelling to objectively reconstruct a large number of unknown flows or interactions from a small number of observations. This type of analysis may be useful in relating observed regime shifts in ecosystem structure to underlying processes. Inversions of ecosystem flow networks currently use a constrained least-squares solution which at the same time minimizes the squared norm (the sum of squares) of the reconstructed flows. This minimum norm (MN) inversion is thought to be a parsimonious solution to the ecosystem flow inverse problem, but it may well not reflect how ecosystems are organised. It has been proposed instead that ecosystems evolve to maximize energy/mass flows or that they maximize the information content of the network weighted by ecosystem flows (ascendancy). We used simulated inverse experiments, where inverse analyses are applied to simulations of flow networks, to explore objective functions different than the MN generally used. We could not compute inverse solutions that maximize ascendancy because the objective function is unbounded. We could calculate inversions that maximize flows; however, these generally overestimated the simulated flows, even though the simulations were designed to maximize flows. It appears that the ecosystem flow inverse problem is too under-determined (too few data relative to the number of unknowns) to allow the use of these maximizing goal functions. We introduce a new minimization that simultaneously minimizes the squared flows and the squared differences between flows. This smoothing minimization makes the inverse flows as even as possible and it helps with some technical issues with MN inversions. The simulated inverse experiments indicated that this smoothed norm (SM) is the most robust in comparative analyses of contrasting ecosystem states, such as those that can be associated with regime shifts. Like the MN inversion, the SM inversion has no ecological basis. However, it is a conservative norm that is less likely to produce false differences between the dynamics of regimes.     

Annual Anthropogenic Carbon Transport into the North Pacific Intermediate Water through the Kuroshio/Oyashio Interfrontal Zone: An Estimation from CFCs Distribution

Vertical distribution of anthropogenic carbon content of the water (exDIC) in the Oyashio area just outside of the Kuroshio/Oyashio Interfrontal Zone (K/O Zone) was estimated by the simple 1-D advection-diffusion model calibrated by the distribution of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The average concentration of exDIC for = 26.60–27.00 is multiplied by the volume transport of Oyashio water into the North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) to estimate the annual transport of exDIC into NPIW through K/O Zone. The estimated transport of exDIC was 0.018–0.020 GtC/y, which corresponds to 15% of the whole total exDIC accumulation in the temperate North Pacific. A simple assessment using the NPIW 1-box model indicates that the current study explains at least 70% of the total annual transport of exDIC into NPIW, and that small exDIC sources for NPIW still exists in addition to K/O Zone.     

High Precision Geoid Models HKGEOID-2000 for Hong Kong and SZGEOID-2000 for Shenzhen, China

High precision geoid models HKGEOID-2000 for Hong Kong and SZGEOID-2000 for Shenzhen, China, have been developed with a hybrid approach of so-called sequential processing, using high precision GPS/leveling data, land and sea gravity anomalies, and digital terrain models. These two local geoid models have the same 1-km resolution. The estimated accuracy (external accuracy) is better than 1.7 cm for HKGEOID-2000 and 1.4 cm for SZGEOID-2000. Some common areas are covered by HKGEOID-2000 and SZGEOID-2000. So these two geoid models, along with high quality GPS/leveling data collected on the overlapping areas, can be used to detect the systematic bias between HKGEOID-2000 and SZGEOID-2000, as well as the difference between Hong Kong Principal Datum and 1956 yellow sea height datum of China, yielding RMS errors of 1.011 m and 1,003 m, respectively. Moreover, HKGEOID-2000, along with GPS ellipsoidal heights, is employed to determine the errors of the “orthometric heights” from purely trigonometric heighting, yielding an RMS error of 0.102 m. The combination of SZGEOID-2000 and GPS ellipsoidal heights has been used to replace the traditional spirit leveling and mapping, called GPS mapping.     

GPS数据采集技术及其在海洋调查中的应用

本文应用VB6．0开发了智能化的GPS数据采集软件．对该软件的功能进行了简单的介绍，同时对一些关键技术作了较详细的描述。利用该软件、GPS接收机及PC机的组合，可对走航式测量仪器(或移动设备)进行实时定位并保存定位记录，且大大减少一些不必要的数据，使得软件更为实用。